Reply to Immersion and other language classes in schools. Which language and why?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have a working knowledge of Spanish, French, Russian, and Chinese (and one or two other languages that are more obscure).

For living in the US, Spanish is the way to go. You're much more likely to need it in every day scenarios compared to the others. At the same time, Spanish is relatively easy to learn compared to Russian and Chinese (uses Roman alphabet).

Forget French. It's great for intellectual reasons, but not that useful. Yes, I know many countries speak French, but even that's going out of style. For example, Rwanda changed their official language from French to English a couple years ago. You never see countries switching [i]to[/i] French any more.

Russian is the lingua franca of most of Eastern Europe. I can get around in at least 20 countries with Russian, as the locals know it as a second or first language, or their own language is similar (Slavic).

Mandarin is the interesting one. First, the characters (referring to Simplified, not Traditional Chinese) do not map directly to spoken language. There are many dialects in China, and people may not be able to understand each other, but they can both understand the same characters. The reason is that the characters do not necessarily indicate pronunciation (yes, I know about pictophonetic characters but tell that to someone from Guangdong province). I'm assuming the schools teach standard Mandarin (putonghua). In terms of learning grammar, Chinese is actually pretty easy. Verbs are not declined, and there is no perfect tense. You basically have present and past tense only. The numbers are really easy also. Usefulness is the big question. If you plan to spend time in China or nearby countries, knowledge of Mandarin will be extremely useful as English skills are sorely lacking (this may be different in 20 years from now though). [b]However, there are huge numbers of American children with Chinese parents who will get those jobs before any non-Chinese person due to more skills.[/b]

Ok, so that's not an answer. We're facing the same question also, though not for immersion. I'm leaning towards Spanish and then Chinese.

[/quote]

This is true but most Amercian born Chinese while they can speak Mandarin or Cantonese, more common, aren't literate.  BIG difference.  Also, it does not matter if whether a having a Chinese heritage is preferred.  When the Chinese do business with foreigners, they are doing business with foreigners and don't expect "Chineseness" b/c non-native born Chinese aren't native born "Chinese".  Literacy and ability to communication in Mandarin is the main thing and it doesn't matter whether you are a "Big Nose" or not.[/quote]

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